49 comments:

Nude women in art history were not usually depicted with visible genitalia (with notable exceptions, of course). That's a big difference between the female nude form and the male nude form— the penis and testicles show!

When depicting the male nude in the west, small genitals were often preferred because a large penis and pendulous testicles were thought distracting, low-class and even vulgar.

A lot of Greek and Roman marbles got their packages knocked off by Saracens or other iconoclasts, or simply because the attachment was a weak point in the carving.

Perhaps I am the only man who sees a woman and does not obsess with her "lady parts". I see the curves. I know what lies beneath. However, I have the capacity to moderate my glance. A woman is not defined by her physical features. As for all things, context matters.

Isn't it Camille Paglia in Sexual Personae who goes on and on at length about the change in the archetype of the beautiful body being male in the Classical world to finally changing definitively over to female in the Renaissance?

Or, oh ye here who know the mavens of art history better than I, was she cribbing from some other art historian?

Isn't it Camille Paglia in Sexual Personae who goes on and on at length about the change in the archetype of the beautiful body being male in the Classical world to finally changing definitively over to female in the Renaissance?

Or, oh ye here who know the mavens of art history better than I, was she cribbing from some other art historian?

I think that Paglia was wrong about that. To me, Renaissance art, at least in its Italian manifestation, retained the male body as the archetype of beauty, in that it served as the perfect embodiment of the human machine. The two greatest exemplars of the Renaissance, Leonardo and Michelangelo, certainly did not promote female archetype of beauty. Leonardo's ideal beauty was sexless, an androgyne, if it could be characterized by external appearance at all, since I believe his true fascination was with the inner body, the anatomy of the human, the beautiful machine.

Michelangelo never painted or sculpted a real woman in his career. Look at the frescos of the Sistine Chapel, or at his glorious marbles. It's the male body, almost exclusively, that serves as the ideal of human beauty. Even his nominally female figures were simply men with perfunctory breasts.

the opening display is a "walk through 500 years of history … You have an old Egyptian nude ... to a postmodern statue.

This is where I stopped reading. A distressing example of misunderstanding of scale. That would be 5000 years. 3000 years BC to now.

Or possibly typo.

One of the ladies I took to Tut exhibition next door when it was here asked me what BCE means. She's a religious woman so she wasn't pleased to learn they changed it to remove Christ from the calculation.

I think that Paglia was wrong about that. To me, Renaissance art, at least in its Italian manifestation, retained the male body as the archetype of beauty, in that it served as the perfect embodiment of the human machine.

I think you're right. I was going to suggest maybe the Baroque period (Rubens et al) would've been the start of the change, but then I thought of Caravaggio! So, no.

18th/ 19th century-- yes. The French neoclassical and mannerist painters, the Victorians (including pre-Raphaelites) seem much more focused on female beauty.

It's interesting, because moving away from the image of the male body as the archetype of beauty or perfection or meaning is to move away from two different traditions: the classical Greco-Roman tradition and a big part of the Christian tradition (focused on Jesus, the Crucifixion, martyrs like St. Sebastian, etc.). "Incarnation"-- in a sense the essential fact of human existence (in the Christian tradition)-- happens in a male body.

But then-- that conception occurs in a female body. The focus on the female body, the tradition of Mary iconography is (arguably) connected to something even more primeval and primal. Cf. the Venus of Willendorf. That's something beyond "beauty" or "perfection."It's something to do with primal matter/ mater.

But I do think it plausible that to understand the modern world's turn away from images of male beauty, we have to look at changing societal views on sexuality. At a certain point in history, I think homoeroticism becomes threatening or proscribed, for complicated reasons. (Complicated, because at certain times when homosexuality is arguably more accepted, images of naked male beauty are more scarce, at least in the "mainstream.")

Female desire has been problematized and scapegoated throughout history, so it's harder to ascribe the shift to views on that. But then again, maybe it has to do with the fact that in the modern world, there's more of a sense that women (not just men) are the spectators of art? In which case, some "moral" regulating might come into play.

Bad influences, you know. I know there was a lot of discussion about that re novels (and female readers) in the 18th century and beyond.

Cosmo, People Magazine, Vanity Fair, Star, what do these all have in common?

Pictures of Lots of Women.

So here is my theory. Women are obsessed with, now get this, Women. So are men. That's why they sell so well.

I definitely think there's something to this, but the explanation is more complicated. I have a distinct memory of writing a comment at an Althouse post suggesting a theory along these lines-- invoking a comparison between female and male popular magazines (both of which have a preponderance of images of women). Maybe something to do with male and female responses to pornography, or something to do with animal sociobiology? I can't remember, and I can't find it.

One of the ladies I took to Tut exhibition next door when it was here asked me what BCE means. She's a religious woman so she wasn't pleased to learn they changed it to remove Christ from the calculation.

CE and BCE get the eye roll from everyone outside academia. "Isn't that cute? They're puffed up with self-importance again."

Perhaps I am the only man who sees a woman and does not obsess with her "lady parts". I see the curves. I know what lies beneath. However, I have the capacity to moderate my glance. A woman is not defined by her physical features. As for all things, context matters.

I have severe panic disorder. My Dad has it, and my sister almost got it. I am taking an SSRI, and it has essentially such down my libido. In one sense, it has allowed me to understand the true beauty of women. It's an amazing feeling, to look at the wonderful curves of a woman, without being driven mad with desire. There is an amazing beauty there.

I've partaken of pornography. Here is what I've observed. First, all the guys have enormous shlongs, almost as long as my own! Just kidding, I added that in for fun.

Also, there is never gay male interaction on any pornography. But, there is a LOT of woman on woman sex.

I read about this. And what I learned is that women on women sex is the single most exciting thing to the heterosexual male. Nothing is more stimulating. I've also noticed that women don't seem to mind, and in fact also find women having sex with women exciting.

I've also found that women, in particular, find the idea of male on male sex disgusting. For heterosexual men, by studies, there is no stimulation (except for men that are homophobically violent to gays, and are probably gay themselves: let's face it, gays are violent).

So here is my theory. Female on female sex is OK. Male on male sex is disgusting. The female form is amazingly beautiful to both men and women. Not the nasty bearded male like mouth of the Vagina, but the female form.

That's what everyone wants. To get that penis in the vagina, the sacredness. It's precious, and withheld for obvious biological reasons. Meanwhile, women are largely ambivalent to appearance. They seek other things. As evidenced recently by Petreaus. He's an old man, that got a young beauty in bed. Yet, what man would want to go to bed with equivalently old and powerful Feinstein?

I've also found that women, in particular, find the idea of male on male sex disgusting.

You may be right about this, statistically. But I'm well acquainted with counterexamples. For example, the genre of fanfiction-- and in particular the great popularity of slash fiction (involving M/M coupling) among women above all and almost exclusively.

I guess I'm outing myself as a geek when I attest my acquaintance with the concept of fanfiction and slash fiction (e.g. in the Whedon-verse). Not my thing-- but I wasn't disgusted by the idea, either. And I know very well that many female fans (and authors of M/M fanfiction) were much more excited to think about (say) Spike and Angel together than either of them with Buffy.

Guys are the prime consumers of nudity and since heterosexuals outnumber homosexuals about 99 to 1, you see more naked women (even outside porn).

Ask a woman what attracts her to a man and she'll take about his eyes, etc.; it's the face, not so much the body.

Remarks like Oop's seem to fall under the rubric of feminist posturing.

n.n said...

Perhaps I am the only man who sees a woman and does not obsess with her "lady parts". I see the curves. I know what lies beneath. However, I have the capacity to moderate my glance. A woman is not defined by her physical features. As for all things, context matters.

Precisely.

Consider combat footage of the dead, naked bodies in a place like Dachau or Buchenwald.

Michelangelo was not a painter, and even if the bodies of some of his female subjects are rather muscular, others are distinctly feminine. Indeed, I would dare say that as a whole, his painted female bodies are more authentically female with all the bulges and lack of hourglass figures, than are the idealized versions painted by Botticelli.

@Chip AhoyOne of the ladies I took to Tut exhibition next door when it was here asked me what BCE means. She's a religious woman so she wasn't pleased to learn they changed it to remove Christ from the calculation.

Did you say "Before Christian Era"? Or "Before Common Era"? (Coupled with "Common Era" and "Christian Era", respectively, for CE.)

Because both would work. And the "Christian Era" pair avoids the "A.D./80" homonym that has always bugged me. As well as the A.D.-prefix and postfix-B.C. thing.

Besides, there definition of "Common Era" can get hazy, and the "Before Christ" thing gets messy when historians realize that Dionysius Exiguus (a.k.a. Dennis the Short) probably got the year of Christ's Birth wrong.

I'm surprised no one has commented on the widespread use of the (disembodied) phallus. It's a symbol of fertility and common among many religions, including many Christian religions (ones that have incorporated pre-christian traditions into their ceremonies). A modern variation of the phallus, the vibrator, is a frequent topic of discussion on TV shows.So why are depictions of the phallus ok, but depictions of flaccid penises still attached to bodies so outrageous?